Competition and Pricing

While the Attrage is a compact sedan, its competition is more price-based than by segment. The new Honda City is also a compact sedan, but costs more than 25 percent more, for example. Hyundai’s Accent is a a solid choice but costs S$76k with COE now.

At an identical price, the Mitsubishi Space Star is essentially the Attrage in hatchback form – most people will go for the sedan #becauseSingaporeheartsedans. There’s also the Nissan Note, which has similar performance and driving performance, but is slightly smaller, but doesn’t have smartphone connectivity. 

The Attrage isn’t the cheapest sedan you can buy here – that title belongs to the Perodua Bezza, roughly S$5k less, which has a 90hp 1.2-litre engine, but also has a smaller footprint and is likely to be less spacious. 

As we said at the start, the nature of the budget car market is that the Attrage is not necessarily competing only against new cars, but used cars too, and pretty much whatever the personal opportunity cost of S$70k is. 

But even without ride-hailing companies looking for an inexpensive car to run, the Attrage seems to have the right combination of attributes: Mitsubishi Singapore says it’s sold around 300 of them this year, which makes for S$20-million worth of sales, and this is in a year without ride-hiring apps adding Attrages to their fleets. 

Video Review

We go in-depth with our video review of the Attrage – find out what it looks, sounds, and feels like on the road in Singapore.

Conclusion 

The Attrage’s game is sheer affordability, but in Singapore buying a car is never the entirely rational decision to make. With the rise of much improved public transport, not to mention ride-sharing and ride-hailing, that’s even more true.

The nature of budget cars have changed too – the Attrage driver needn’t necessarily be a retiree who wants no-frills motoring, but even a Gen Z or millennial who isn’t as concerned with conspicuous consumption. 

But, ignoring opportunity costs, what-ifs, and assuming your budget is S$70k for a car: The Attrage delivers a surprising amount of features for the money. It’s not the fastest, nicest thing to drive, But the Attrage has space, delivers plenty of features, and even throws updated safety into the mix.

The Attrage is not an outrageous bargain – no car in Singapore is truly – but it delivers solid value for the price.

Mitsubishi Attrage 1.2

Engine	1,193cc, inline 3
Power	80hp at 6000rpm
Torque	106Nm at 4000rpm
Gearbox	CVT
0-100km/h	13.3 seconds
Top Speed17	170 km/h
Fuel Efficiency	4.9L/100km
VES Band / CO2	A2 / ???g/km
Agent	Cycle & Carriage Mitsubishi
Price	S$69,999 with COE
Availability	Now
Verdict	It’s not cheap and cheerful, but cheap and competent – solid motoring value from a budget Japanese car

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